Hey, girlfriends.

This episode includes some discussions of violence and infant death, but you'll also hear from the woman who risked everything to save an entire village who all started to fall ill.

She's amazing.

So about three or four months into my job, my son started having fevers.

Of course, he and Keno and a child has fevers.

You test from malaria, typhoid, you know, tropical diseases.

Phyllis's son is getting sicker by the day, but the doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him.

Phyllis is terrified.

Eventually he had to be hospitalized because he had lost a lot of water, was becoming dehydrated, his eyes well watery, he had become very weak.

Then one day, a friend visits Phyllis at the hospital and asked an unexpected question.

Phyllis, have you tested for lid poisoning?

I asked him why?

He said, but we see you with your son at the office almost every day.

You have your son in the office with you, don't you think it would be exposed to lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning wasn't even on the doctor's radar, so they sent her son's blood work to South Africa for testing.

When their blood work came back, he tested positive for lead poisoning.

The numbers are shocking, thirty five micrograms of lead per destla sair of blood.

The World Health Organization says anything above three point five for children is dangerous.

But what was most terrifying is the fact that the pedetricians told me that the hospitals were not equipped to teste or to manage lead poisoning for Phyllis.

This is beyond alarming.

They were not trained, so they didn't know what to do.

So if a doctor tells you that you know it kills everything in New, it shut does everything in New.

But it also motivated me to start doing my own research on what is lid poisoning in how I could address it.

This has not come out of the blue.

You see, Phyllis works at a metal smelting plant in her local town.

For months, she's been trying to tell her bosses that she believes their factory may be poisoning the community.

I interacted with the community and they told me that they had noticed that the air had become very toxic.

They could not breathe.

The water that seeped from the industry into the river had changed the taste of the distant metallic.

But the company won't listen, she says, and now her own child has been poisoned.

Then I realized I was the only one who could save my son.

Phyllis is about to begin a fight that will make her the enemy of an entire industry, one that will go to great lengths to keep their dirty little secret under the radar.

The question is how much is Phyllis willing to risk to save the community.

I'm Anisonfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts.

This is the Girlfriend's Spotlight, where we tell stories of women women Today, Phyllis saves the people from poisoning you.

It's two thousand and nine.

Philis Amado is a single mother looking for a fresh start in Mombasa, Kenya.

I was a young girl at that time, very young, recently moved from upcountry.

A got the job as admin and human resource and therefore I was in charge of you know, licensing, employment and all that in the organization.

The company hiring Phyllis is called Metal Refinery.

Since two thousand and seven, it's run a smelting factory recycling lead acid batteries in the village of a Weno Whuu.

Just outside Mombasa.

We know who is a small place with a few thousand residents.

It's often described as a slum.

Of course, I was offered a very good pay, I was given a car, and for me, those were really big incentives.

And of course it was an opportunity to give my son a better life, and my siblings were also depending on me.

From day one, something doesn't feel right about this job.

Even sitting in the office, you realize that there was a really pageants mill.

I was lucky because my office had an ac so I would go in and close the door, but still there would be that you know, you're eyes are stinging, there is a smell of sulfur.

One of Phyllis's first tasks, it's a completely something called an environmental impact assessment, so she brings in an expert to assess how the refinery is operating.

The expert advised me that the negative impacts of the company far outweighed the positive in terms of environmental and health impact to the community the workers.

He told me that the location of this melter was wrong, that it needed to be moved, and that is when I first actually absorbed and understood the magnitude of what this meant for us.

And am I right in thinking that.

In spoke to some of the other women who led locally, and I had also noticed some problems.

Yes, so part of my work also was public relations.

I interacted with the community and they told me that they had noticed that the air had become very toxic.

They could not breathe, the children were coughing at night.

The water sipped from the industry into the river had changed the taste of the water in the river that it tasted, you know, bitter, It tested metallic, And so they had their own suspicion already that something was going wrong, but we did not have any scientific proof that something was actually wrong.

At that point.

Even walking around the town of Awayno Hur, right next to the factory, Philis could immediately say things are not right.

When you walked on the playground, you could see particles of lead on the playground.

When you walked into the community, you would feel these particles landing onto your skin.

You would see them in the air.

And then she makes Calvin Kelvin.

Was a lovely little boy.

He was very naughty.

He loved to play football.

He's an orphan living with his grandmother, and his grandmother really dotted over Kelvin a lot.

Unfortunately, one time, when Kelvin was playing football on the playground, he was trying to catch the ball and he stepped into the affluent living metal refinery and it completely burned his foot.

Toxic waste from the smelting plants were seeping into the soil in the children's playground.

Well, Calvin's being treated at the local clinic, Phyllis decides to get his blood tested for lead poisoning.

Was I think around thirty five at the time that we tasted thatty five micrograms, but decilit of lead in blood.

And what should be your lead levels in your blood?

Anything above five micrograms the decisitive lead in blood is indicative of lead poisoning.

So he had thirty five as a child, so that was alarming.

But the sad thing was that we tested him after three months and it went up up to thirty seven.

And then we tested again it went up up to forty something, So his blood lead levels kept going higher and higher when metal refinery was open.

Armed with this evidence, the breathing problems, the metallic tasting water, the burns Fellows schedules.

An urgent meeting with her managers.

That was very a larmed at what I had found.

And I had assumed that if I presented these reports to the managers that they would be receptive and immediately look to protect life, not just the environment, but the life of the community.

But they immediately told me to stop what I was doing, that this would be given to one of the expatriate or managers who would deal with it, and that I should just concentrate on human resource.

Did you get the impression that they already knew that this was happening.

Yes, I got the impression that they already knew.

And then comes the moment that changes everything.

So about three or four months into my job, my son started having fevers.

The hospitalized him, they put him on a drip.

His diagnosed with lead poisoning, and Phyllis decides to take matters into her own hands.

I would read day and night about incidents of lid poisoning, how they are managed.

I got as much information.

As I could how do I best help these children, And that is exactly what I started to do.

At the hospital.

The doctors aren't addressing the root cause, they're just treating her son's symptoms.

So after a few weeks, he's discharged and it's Phyllis who reads up on how to reduce his blood lead levels, things like drinking lots of milk, eating bananas because foods with lots of calcium helped to displace the lead.

Phyllis meets with her bosses again to tell them that her son is being poisoned.

And not only that, I had then tested ten children from the community and all tend her tested POSITI for lid poisoning.

I think I had hoped that they would feel, you know, ashamed, and do something about it, you know.

Phillis says.

The company offered her money in return for an agreement that she wouldn't disclose anything she had discovered.

She told me she took the money she needed it for her son's treatment, but she didn't sign their silence agreement.

Instead, she quits her job and starts her own organization, the Center for Justice, Governance and Environmental Action, a nonprofit fighting for environmental justice.

She starts to look deeper into what's happening to people in a we know.

A whou The most affected, of course, were children because they play in the soil We tested over one hundred children and ninety percent of them tested positive full aid poisoning.

But also the women paid the most severe consequences.

In getting to know the community, Phyllis meets a local woman, a twenty four year old newlywored who is desperate to have children.

But every time she got a pregnant, she would miscarry and miscarriage.

She got five miscarriages.

Fels sense.

She warns the woman to stop trying to get pregnant.

You have to stop because you have high light levels in your body.

I think two hundred and seventy two micrograms of lead in her blood.

And I told her it's not going to happen.

You have to stop.

And she kept insisting that she had faith that she would carry this child.

And eventually things do go differently for her.

She carried her baby to tom and she gave birth exactly one week after giving bad.

She died because her lead levels were too high.

Her blood would not pump her interest and she died.

She left her child.

I went to test him at bath.

He was one positive for lead poisoning.

Then Fellas meets another woman.

She got pregnant.

The child died in her womb.

By the time we got her to hospital, her womb was completely destroyed.

Because the child would not survive, her womb was removed, so she's unable to give back ever again because of the highlight levels in her blood.

The true horrors of what's really happening around the factory are coming to light.

After the break, Phyllis takes her fight to a national level and raises all hell.

Phyllis is horrified by what she has discovered around metal refinery, smelting factory and we know a huru.

Local people are struggling to breathe, children burned as they play, babies lost before birth, brand new mother's dying, the levels of lead in their blood simply too high to survive.

She hears heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story.

These women deserved better than what they got from what they said in you know the corporation that set.

Up one story in particular, wunts Phyllis.

I'll tell you about the first time that I met Sammy.

A local five year old boy she got to know.

I asked Sammy, you know canan dialect swahilia?

I asked him, Sammy, how are your loved ones?

Which is a normal, gritty and Sammy said, I don't love anyone.

I love you only, and of course I fell in love with with Sammy.

At that point he had my total hat and from that time I nicknamed him you only in Swahili, and I called Sami new it too, It's only you.

Samy's been breathing and lead pascors every day of his young life.

The dust and smoke, what the local was called acid rain from the factory's chimneys has burnt his skin so badly that it's literally peeling off.

He's in and out of hospital constantly.

And when Sammy was hospitalized this time, I knew that it was a bit serious.

And after I finished my work, I had planned to see Sami, but I was not able to see Sammy.

So I went home and his mother called me at night and asked, are you going to be able to come and see Sammy?

And I said no, let me talk to Sammy and I was on phone and he asked, are you coming for me?

I said yes, Are you bringing the car to pick me?

And I said yes.

All you need to do for me is get better and I'll bring the car to pick you from hospital.

And I asked him, are you going to get better.

I said, yes, I'm going to get better.

So I said, okay, fine, you get better.

Tomorrow is another day.

I'll pass by and see you.

That's who I am.

Phyllis gets a call from Samy's mom.

I picked the call and I asked her, Catherine, are you okay?

Is Sami okay?

And she told me Samy has left us?

And I did not understand how Samy has left us.

Yes, sir, what do you mean Sammy has left us?

She said, Sami is gone.

Sammy is gone.

He's not breathing.

I told him, don't move him, don't move his spotty because I don't believe that Sammy has died.

Don't do anything until I get there.

So I drove and went to hospital and Sammy was there on the bed.

But Sammy was gone.

Samu was dead.

The acid from the chimneys had completely damaged his skin so that at the point of death, Sammy's skin was not able to hold onto his body.

If you touch him, this kid would come off.

So he died a very painful death.

There's nothing that anyone would have done to bring him back.

At that point, in the midst of her grief, Phyllis tries to get Sammy's medical files as evidence, but the hospital flat out refuses.

Maybe when they will manage to get through, maybe a court or or something to get Sammy's fire out.

I hope you do.

Sammy sounds like a really wonderful little boy.

He was really cute.

I'll send you a picture afterwards.

Everything Phyllis says in a we know Huru.

Every tragedy she witnesses makes her more angry, and the lack of concern from the company behind all the suffering just makes her more determined to act.

She starts writing letters, first to Kenya's National Environmental Management Authority NIMA.

I include the results of the children that were sick and told them that something was critically wrong.

They needed to take a second look.

And the reaction the first letok that they wrote to me was that they were ready to defend themselves against any accusations that I brought against them, and that they were not privy to what I was accusing them of.

And I wrote back and said, I'm not accusing you.

I'm telling you that children are falling sick and I've.

Given new proof.

She writes.

The government officials agencies basically anyone who might listen.

Every single letter includes those devastating blood test results for the response crickets, it's time to get the community involved.

At first, I worked with the women, mostly because they're the ones who were awaked underlive.

To what was going on.

Unfortunately, most of the men were employed inside the smelter.

So when I started the most sets, the women that went with meet the women that sat on the committees.

It is the women that you know, worked with me that journey.

In twenty twelve, Fellows organizes a mass demonstration, but things go very wrong.

So I was in the community, you know, mobilizing, asking the women to come out.

Some of the men also to join us.

The kids were playing and everything, and then suddenly there were loud bangs and there was police everywhere.

There was tear gus and they kept asking where's this woman, where's this woman?

Then where's Phyllis?

And so I came out and said I'm here, I'm here.

She does not expect what happens.

Next they dragged me.

They were pulling me and you know, beating me.

I lost my shoes.

By the time they got me to the road from the community, I had no shoes.

They made me sit down there, and then they made me watch the most horrific scene in my life, because they started going door to door breaking the houses.

People in Oweno, who are usually and maybe two three dollars a day, barely enough for food and sustenance, and the police go in and completely destroy all their belongings.

Is clearly designed to break Phyllis's spirit and send a message to anyone thinking of supporting her.

And they made me sit there for almost six hours as they did this, and of course people ran away, they fled because they had never seen anything like this, and so I was arrested together with sixteen other community members.

Philip spends the night in a police sell.

When the morning comes, she discovers something heartwarming.

The entire community has spent the night sleeping outside the police station waiting for her.

When the police take her to the courthouse the next morning, everyone follows.

And the courthouse was packed with members of the Nahu community.

And when they read my name, when the judge said Phyllis Omido, the environmental activist, and I accepted that, Yes.

My name is Phyllis Omiado.

I'm an environmental activist.

And that was the first time that I actually accepted my role as an environmental activist.

That's the moment Phyllis is no longer just a worried mom or whistle blowing employee.

She's officially a thorn in the government side.

She starts community petitions and pushes those all the way to the Kenyan Parliament.

Of course, the parliamentarians came from Nairobi, they came to the community.

They did their own tests and they got very horrific results, worse than what I got.

They got up to four hundred and twenty micrograms by decility of lead in blood.

Remember the safe level is three point five for children.

This is four hundred and twenty.

So we wrote a petition to Parliament and then we wrote a petition to Senate.

They both did their own investigation, removed their own reports, but nobody was bothering within government how to get justice this.

Smelters were still operating.

In fact, at that time they had even licensed most smelters in Mombasa.

We had three smelters in Mombasa at that time.

All this noise is definitely getting attention, unfortunately not the kind Phyllis was hoping for, because being labeled an activist has painted a big target on her back.

After the break, Phyllis has her closest call yet after you.

One evening, Phyllis is walking home from church with her young son.

It was getting a bit dark and when I got home, as I was opening the gate, there were two men that were standing there, so I just said hi, and I proceeded to open the gate.

I assumed maybe they were watchmen from the neighbors, or they're just passer by, but they moved close to me and they had guns.

And I put my hands up, like to surrender, because this is what we see in the movies, and I'd never experienced something like this, so I put my hands up.

He hit me and said put your hands down.

So I put my hands down and.

They started, you know, roughing me up.

One of them said, we are told you are standing up to men in this society, and I said, no, I'm not standing up to any man.

I'm from church right now.

There's nothing I've done.

At first, Fellows thinks maybe they just want to rob her.

But one me and said, you're very rude.

Said you think you're not too much.

You think you're not too much, that's why you're standing up to people in this society.

I realized then that these people are not thieves.

They are not just arm drobbers or something.

These people had been sent by someone.

To intimidate her for her activism.

So I told them, okay, I'm here.

I promise you, I'm not going to run.

I'm not going to do anything.

Allow my son to go inside.

I'll stay here.

Then you do whatever you want with me.

The two men start arguing with each other about what to do with her son.

I opened the gate, pushed my son in, I locked it, and then I threw the key inside.

I think that even aggravated him more so he hit me and I fell now on the floor, so my head was down and I could hear my son screaming, and I was very afraid because I thought maybe they would shoot through the gate and shoot my son, you know.

And I kept trying to gather attention to me and not to my son.

I kept, you know, trying to talk and you know, telling him I'm here.

Just you do whatever you want.

Leave my son Ali, And then like something out of a movie, her neighbor's car pulls up.

The headlights hit the scene like a spotlight.

And he was I think he was drunk at that time a king, Why are you sleeping?

Why are you on the floor?

You couldn't script it.

Phyllis's drunk neighbors stumbles onto the scene and scares the attackers off.

Live in and lift us there.

And so I went inside.

I picked my son.

I told my neighbor, please please drive me to my friends.

Please.

That night changes everything for Phyllis.

She packs up her life, takes her son, and leaves Mombassa for good or because she dared to speak up about children being poisoned.

And still, she says, Metal Refinery, the international corporation behind all all this suffering, won't listen, The government won't act.

It's time for plan be.

Phyllis and her team at the Center for Justice, Governance and Environmental Action find another way to stop the factory.

They pressure the Kenyan government into passing a vital law, a.

Legislation that banned the export of LID and lid a Louis because what they were doing was they was melting and exputting pure LID out of the country, so they were unable to export.

Because then we got the port police to start impounding any containers containing LID living the port of Mumbasa.

They flipped the whole argument.

Instead of stop poisoning people, it became stop exporting our precious resources and boom, no more exports, no more business.

The police start to impound any containers with metal refinery products at the port and this makes the company lose a lot of money, so much so that the factory shuts down in twenty fourteen.

But Fallas isn't done yet.

The court compelled them.

To pay twelve millionaires dollars in compensation to the community and seven millionaires dollars as a finance for cleaning up the remediating the environment in no Huru.

Unfortunately, in twenty twenty one, the government appealed against the judgment, so we went to the Court of Appeal and we lost.

The Court of appealed dold us to go back and start the case afresh at the Environment and Land Coat, but we knew that it was largely because of corruption, not because our case was weak.

So we appealed to the Supreme Court and in December of twenty twenty four we won the case at the Supreme Court and they reinstated the award that was given at the Environment and Land Coat.

So as we stand now, the government is supposed to pay the community.

As we're recording this, that money still hasn't reached the families in a we know who, but Phyllis isn't giving up.

The work you've done has spanned such a long, you know, span of time, and you've been fighting against a lot and people have been fighting back against you.

Is there any particular moment that stands out as a real time when you thought I've won?

Do you ever feel that?

Yes, the first time that metal refinery closed down.

You know, we had tried many times, NEMA would shut them down for a week, reopen, shut them down for aman, reopen.

So when we impounded their containers, when we got the police to impound their containers and they closed down by themselves, that was the first time that we felt.

A we are weaning, maybe we are winning And that was a real victory for us.

Yeah, and the court case, when you finally heard that verdict and it was a win, how did you feel then?

Of course, we celebrated.

I don't think we slept that night when the community the whole night, you know, just dancing and you know, playing music, because for us, we didn't believe that we could get this fine.

That we would win this case, and then we won.

Phyllis's journey is remarkable.

A single mother who started as an admin assistant just beat the government and six state agencies and two companies in court.

That's really David and Goliath Territory.

Today, Phyllis is an internationally recognized environmental activist.

The metal refinery that poisoned her community gone all thanks to her.

And it all started when she first saw Calvin, that little boy who burned his foot from the light deposits in the water well.

Calvin is now in his final year of high school, still fighting, still moving forward.

Will you ever be able to rest?

I've been telling myself that once there were no whole communities compensated and we do a big memorial for you know some his mother died after that because she also had very high lead levels in our blood.

I've been telling myself that once we have compensated the community, that we have ensured that the communities remediated, maybe then I can consider resting.

But I'm not sure because there are many other challenges.

Thank you to Fellows for telling us her incredible story.

You know, life isn't easy for her.

She still faces security threats from the powerful people's sands up to so I'm beyond grateful that she made time for this conversation.

If you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find loads more incredible women on our feed.

Do check them out, and please do spread the word and tell your friends about us.

We want as many people as possible to be part of the Girlfriend's Gang.

Next time on the Girlfriend's Spotlight, Miss Sahara Crown's Queens.

I'm tall.

I'm fivefuty eleven on heels, I'm six foot three, but I really don't care.

This is who I am.

We are coming to.

This world to contribute in one wordio there, and that makes us beautiful.

This season, we're supporting the charity Womankind Worldwide.

They do amazing work to help women's rights organizations and movements to strengthen and grow.

If you'd like to find out more or donate to help them secure equal rights for women and girls across the globe, you can go to Womankind dot org dot UK.

The Girlfriend's Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.

For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio.

The show is hosted by me Anna Sinfield.

This episode was written and produced by al Shehi Barney, with additional production and story finding by Maddie hickeish Our researcher is Seyana Yusuf.

The editor is Hannah Marshall.

Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are executive producers.

Production management from Joe Savage, Sharie Houston and Charlotte Wolf.

Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson.

Music supervision by Jacob t, Nicholas Alexander and Annasonfield.

Original music composed by Louisa Gerstein and Jemma Freeman.

The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemkol.

Willard Foxton is creative director of Development.

Special thanks to Katrina Norvel, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carl Frankel and the whole team at WM